Chapter 2: Midnight on Station No. 4

The lighthouse smelled of salt, kerosene, and old paper. Agnes had lived on the ground floor in two small rooms crowded with logbooks, every one of them labeled by year. Mara pulled one from the shelf at random. Each page held a date, a weather report, and a short list of names written in that same neat hand.

October 3. Wind northeast, sea rough. Thomas Bell. Ada Morrow. A child, no name given.

There were no notes about ships. No cargo, no vessel numbers, no harbor traffic. Only names, night after night, year after year, thousands of them filling the shelves from floor to ceiling.

She climbed the spiral stairs at eleven, mostly to prove to herself that there was nothing up there. The lantern room was cold and spotless. The great glass lens sat in its brass cradle, catching the last light of the town below. There was no switch, no fuel line she could find, nothing that looked like it had been used in decades.